Forum hints and tips

This discussion will present some useful hints and tips on using the forum software. Its creation was in part prompted by me accidentally stumbling across a cool feature that'll be useful to many, but is hidden away.

Removing categories from your viewsIf there are categories in which you're not interested (Shopping UK, perhaps, if you're in the USA), you can prevent discussions from those categories appearing in your view. Here's how to remove specific categories:

1. Click on Categories in the menu on the right to access Category Management2. Hover over the one you're not interested in3. Click on the Options button that appears4. Click on Unfollow

If you wish to follow the category again, repeat the previous steps and in the last step, choose Follow. If you don't see the categories previously marked as "unfollowed", you may need to select "Show unfollowed categories" from the right hand navigation to display.

Mark all viewedNew to the forum? Want to remove all the yellow new message counts? Click on Mark all viewed in the top menu to do so. Note that if you've read some of the replies in a conversation, it will remove the new message count but also forget those that you've read so the next time you view it will appear as if you've not read any of them.

There is a Mark read menu item in the categories list options, which implies that you can mark conversations in specific categories as read, but it doesn't appear to do anything for me.

Do you have any handy tips to share? Let us know here and we'll add them.

Inserting hyperlinks to Brickset set detail pagesSet numbers preceded with a # will be converted to hyperlinks to set details pages. If a set suffix is not provided, -1 will be assumed. Examples:

#6876 -- link to the Blacktron Alienator#6876-1 -- link to the Blacktron Alienator

So for normal URLs to work (where you don't want text to be the link, like this, which can be accomplished like this <a href="http://www.google.co.uk">this </a> ) then just type the URL (with http://) and it will automatically hyperlink. Only use the hyperlink button if you want an item of text to link.

It looks like we now can opt out of the mobile version via a "Full Site" link at the bottom of the mobile pages...

Is there a way to get back to the mobile mode after clicking the Full Site link? It seems like it automatically resets the next day, but I'd like to be able to switch back sooner. Here's my pattern today - reading content with mobile mode, see a post for something being sold, curse that there's no way to PM from mobile mode, click the Full Site link, send PM, curse that there's no way to get back to mobile mode for reading.

^ Check the settings on your phone. When investigating this clearing cookies malarkey, as suggested by @yellowcastle, I discovered all sorts of options I didn't know I had - including a box to check/uncheck for enabling mobile sites. Does that make sense to you? I'm not a techie, I don't know all the jargon. Clearing cookies to me usually means scoffing something chocolatey :-)

Is there away of preventing the little red number coming up over my username and leaving it only over the 'Inbox' tab when a 'discussion' post is made. Having gone into my 'Inbox' and relevant discussion to read and clear the red notification, I then need to click on my username just to clear that notification as well.

I have a new display on the mobile version which now shows the category of each discussion - yay! - but when I exit a discussion to go back to the home page I lose "all discussions" view and can't see how to switch back - boo!

Ok, found the "recent discussions" button to rectify the above but now discovered I can't edit my previous post on the mobile site - I edit practically every post I make because of predictive text errors on my phone, this is a pain...

Thanks rocao. Weirdly, I can only see the recent discussions button when I'm already in all discussions on the mobile site, can't see a button for it in category view. I have to reload the site using a favourite shortcut to get discussions view.

Due to the 3/19/12 forum upgrade, the "All Discussions" view is currently difficult to attain in the mobile version. We're escalating the issue to Vanilla but in the meantime, there is a workaround to get to and stay in this view.

Workaround

- Utilize this link: http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussions- When done with a particular discussion, simply use your back arrow- To refresh the discussions you've then read, click "Recent Discussions" up top

At the bottom of every discussion in the Forum's Full Site Version, you should now find 4 links.

- Home = Sends you to the default Forum view which is currently set for "Category"- (Current Category) = Sends you to the view of discussions in that specific category- Recent Discussions = Sends you to the "All Discussions" view- Categories = Sends you to the "Category" view

Please note that this solution does not apply to the Forum's Mobile Version. Thus, we Mobile viewers will have to still employ the "workaround" noted above.

^^^ @rocao - Did you just poo on my phone again? :o) I too really like the mobile version for reading and such. But when I need more utility, I switch over to the Full Site version. It's great that we now have an easy way to switch back and forth.

@Huw, would it be possible to redirect posts instead of deleting them from their original location? I read the forum thru my feedreader, then go to the post if I would like to participate in the discussion. Recently there has been a number of interesting posts, that when I clicked on their link in the feedreader brought up the dreaded "Discussion Not Found" notice. I'm pretty sure these posts were not deleted, as they were very good and relevant. So I assume they were moved to somewhere else, but I have no idea how to find them. Would it be possible to have a redirect link attached to the original location? Otherwise would you have any suggestions on how to find them? Keep up the awesome work!...(c:

We do our best to merge new duplicative threads quickly so as to minimize any confusion. There is often some gap in time, though. In those occasions where I struggle to find a specific thread, I sometimes find it helpful to simply review all comments made by a specific user who I remember seeing in the thread. I'm not sure if that will help you here but I've found success with it.

Would it be possible to turn the blue page numbers on a thread into a drop down menu, thus eliminating the ellipsis? For example, longer threads look something like this: 1 2 3 ... 89 90 91. Which make getting to the middle rather arduous. Just a thought.

^Good idea. Would be useful here, too. Im used to use this on a forum on curse.com which has threads about 1000pages and with the menu you can selevt every page with the same time of clicks.Vanillaforums should implement this.